Suddenly, Wal-Mart seems vulnerable

Freight tonnage by mode.

Last month's strike at a Wal-Mart warehouse in Elwood, Ill., was only 10 days long. It involved only two dozen workers. And yet it caused shortages of goods in Wal-Mart retail stores in the Chicago area.

What's more, the workers went back to work with full pay. And get this: The Indypendent reports their demands are being met:

Mike Compton, a former striker who is now back at work in the warehouse told me about the new climate of the warehouse. “Managers are being overly nice,” he said.

We ask for safety equipment, they get us safety equipment — shin guards, masks, gloves. They do seem a little scared to have us as a group. We’ve forced meetings on them. We’ve been using the Weingarten Rights [by which a union member has a right to have a union official or steward with them at any meeting or hearing that could potentially lead to discipline], whether or not it’s disciplinary.

The strike revealed a startling vulnerability in the retailer's vast supply chain. Wal-Mart depends on a
lean, speedy supply system to deliver the right goods to the right customers at exactly the right moment. But if a key link in the chain fails, Wal-Mart could be in trouble.

It looks as if that's what happened in Elwood. Warehouse Workers for Justice explained in a report:

The Chicago area is the only place in North America where six Class I railroads meet. Warehouses, distribution centers, container storage locations and intermodal facilities dot the landscape. The strategic node of transportation that exists in the greater Chicago area, dubbed the “Midwest Empire,” is a crucial link in the intermodal movement of goods in the United States.

And 70 percent -- yup, 70 percent -- of Wal-Mart's domestic goods are processed through the Elwood warehouse, which is owned by RoadLink. That doesn't leave much room for error.

The Indypendent concludes the recent strikes at Wal-Mart

...raise the possibility that workers may be able to crack the anti-union wall at the country's largest employer...

And:

The importance of this link on the Walmart supply chain was indicated quite clearly by the response of the state of Illinois to a protest by Warehouse Workers for Justice and its community allies: police in riot gear, along with threats of deploying long-range acoustic devices and projectiles. The fact that a small minority of workers at a warehouse were able to cause such fear from management leads one to think that such links in the supply chain are just as tenuous as labor researchers have thought them to be. 

Could be.